70 A.D.- JERUSALEM DESTROYED BY THE ROMANS- After a prolonged siege, the Roman legions of Vespasian break into the city and crush the Jewish revolt with great slaughter. The cedar panels and muslin curtains of the Great Temple of Herod catch fire and the entire temple is destroyed but for an outer building retaining wall, known thereafter as the Wailing Wall. One interesting detail is most adherents of the little religious sect called Christians had fled the city early, believing this cataclysm to be the first sign of the fulfillment of prophesies of the Second Coming of Christ.

70AD-One mystery about the destruction of Jerusalem is the disappearance of the ARK OF THE CONVENANT which was taken from the Great Temple of Herod by the Romans and kept as a treasure in Rome. Some say it was carried off by the Goths when Rome fell four hundred years later and buried with their king Alaric. Another legend said a Christian Roman Emperor named Valerian returned the Ark to Jerusalem but the Moslems sacked the monastery it was hidden in. Still another said it is supposedly in Ethiopia guardian by a family of Orthodox monks who keep it in a temple hewn out of rock with one door and one key, guarded for life.

256 AD- St. Lawrence's day. He was the Saint who's emblem is the grill he was roasted on. Supposedly he showed his contempt for his torturers efforts by saying:" I think I'm done on this side." The Perseid Meteor Shower occurs around this time. It has been called the Burning Tears of Saint Lawrence.

1415- King Henry V of England and his army embarked from Dover to cross the Channel and kick some serious French butt!

1492- Cardinal Roderigo Borgia elected Pope, despite openly keeping his children Caesar and Lucretia Borgia. He promised so many heavy bribes to the other Cardinals to win that humorists make jokes comparing him to Christ giving his worldly riches to the poor. When asked what his Papal name would be he replied “by the name of the Invincible Alexander”, who was not even a Christian. So Pope Alexander VI it was.

1536- CANADA GETS ITS NAME-French explorer Cartier discovered a great river on St. Lawrence's Day, which he calls the St. Lawrence River. Cartier asks the Huron people "what people lived upstream?". They replied people who work with red copper, in their language" Caignetdaze". Cartier recorded in his log, the land "Chemyn de Canada".

1557- Battle of San Quentin. King Henry II of France thought to see if the new young king of Spain Phillip II was as tough as his predecessor Charles V was. Phillip’s armies beat the French in this battle and threatened Paris before all sued for peace.

1628- The King of Sweden Gustavus builds a huge battleship called the Vasa. In front of the whole court he launches it into a fjord and it immediately sinks straight to the bottom.

1629- Spanish painter Diego Velasquez traveled to Italy to study the Renaissance Masters on the advice of his buddy painter Peter Paul Rubens.

1680- THE GREAT PUEBLO INDIAN REVOLT. In Spanish New Mexico the Pueblo, Zuni, Hopi, Acoma and eastern Apache had had enough of Spanish colonists and their Christianity. A Pueblo leader named Pope' coordinated a simultaneous mass revolt timed by giving each chief a rope with the days marked off with knots. Today the last knot was untied and the Indians attacked the Spaniards from all sides. 500 out of 2,000 Europeans were killed and the churches and town of Santa Fe burned. The Madonna brought from Valencia Spain called La Conquistadora was riddled with arrows, the marks of which you can still see today. The Spaniards retreated back to Old Mexico, but returned in force 13 years later .

1788- Mozart’s on a roll! This day he completed his Jupiter Symphony #41. It was his last symphony. He never heard it performed in his lifetime.

1821- Missouri became a state. The first American state on the west bank of the Mississippi.

1867- Rather than put up with his pushy Secretary of War any longer, President Andrew Johnson asks for Edwin Stanton's resignation. Stanton (who formed the first American Secret Service and as a lawyer invented the "temporary insanity" plea) not only refused, he barricaded himself in his office and his partisans in the former Lincoln cabinet began impeachment proceedings against President Johnson.

1889 - Dan Rylands patents the screw -on cap.

1897 -German chemists working for the Bayer Company invent Aspirin, the first mass market over the counter drug. A powdered tree root that was known to the Native Americans for years. The Romans ground Willow root and dissolved it in water.

1913-The Treaty of Bucharest signed ending the Second Balkan War. Bulgaria was beat up by Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania over the territory they all took from Turkey.

1928- Calvin Coolidge dedicated the cornerstone of the monument at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. The last time a President of the United States rode a horse to deliver a speech.

1942-HALELIEUYAH NIGHT- The Marines in the jungles of Guadalcanal were tensely awaiting a night attack by the Japanese. They convinced each other that because Japanese trying to speak English have trouble pronouncing the English letter “L”, all passwords should contain L’s. So when a few Korean slave laborers straggled into the camp perimeter, the alarmed Marines thinking the attack had started yelled to each other all night: “LOLLYPOP! LIQUIFY! LILLY-LIVERED! LAPLAND! LOLLAPALOOZA!” .

1945- After Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings a third atomic pile was delivered to Tinian island air base to be assembled into one more A-bomb. But it's dropping was canceled by President Truman. He told his aide Dean Acheson: "Another 100,000 people...I can't see killing any more kids." The military had plans for three more bombings in September and three more in October before the land invasion Nov.2nd.

1945- Even after two atomic bomb attacks and the Japanese navy and airforce destroyed, the Japanese cabinet is still divided 3 - 3 on whether to surrender. Defense minister Anami is worried about a mutiny of the army and Prime minister Suzuki still thinks he can get Russia to negotiate separately -Stalin had just declared war and sent troops to invade Manchuria and the Kurile islands. Anami said the National Honor demanded a final battle on the home soil:" Wouldn't it be wonderful to see all of Japan destroyed...like a beautiful flower !"
The impasse was broken by Emperor Hirohito who breaks tradition and personally intervened "The time has come to bear the unbearable". Next morning a note requesting negotiations based on Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration is sent to the Swiss and Swedish Consulates in Tokyo .

1964- Near Ely, Nevada the U.S. Forrest Service cuts down a Bristlecone Pine that scientists thought to be "The oldest living thing"- 4900 years old.

1966 - Daylight meteor seen from Utah to Canada. Only known case of a meteor
entering Earth's atmosphere & leaving it again.

1966- Murderer James French was sent to the electric chair by the state of Oklahoma. He joked :How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? FRENCH FRIES!

1969- The night after Charles Manson’s cultists murdered actress Sharon Tate, they attacked another Los Angeles home at random. They murdered attorney Leo and Rosemary LaBianca on Waverly Drive in the neighborhood of Los Feliz.

1978- Ford announces a recall of it's Pinto series car after tests prove when bumped from behind the auto’s gas tank explodes into flames.

1979- Britain's first official nudist beach opened at Brighton.

1983- Discovery of the Vega Galaxy. This was the first physical proof of a planetary system outside our Milky Way.

1987 - Clara Peller, the elderly actress who gained last minute advertising fame by saying Where's the Beef?, died at 86. The director and writer of the spots was the father of J.J. Sedelmier, who created the Ambiguously Gay Duo and other TV Funhouse animations for SNL.

Answer: Bunk or Bunkum, means to give an inane or nonsensical speech. Around 1820 a Congressman named Felix Walker represented Buncombe County, North Carolina. In the House of Representatives He’d begin every one of his exhaustingly dull speeches with “ Speaking for the People of Buncombe…” He became a joke, and Congressmen would yell out “ That’s just more Bunkum, or That’s Bunk!”